Who is Erriyon Knighton? All you need to know about the teen sensation who won the Rising Star of 2022 award

Erriyon Knighton is the first and only athlete in history to win the World Athletics Male Rising Star of the Year award twice. Along with the 17-year-old figure skater Ilia Malinin, Knighton was also included in the Time 100 Next list.

Last year, Knighton became the youngest American male track and field Olympian since runner Jim Ryun in 1964 after breaking the junior sprint record held by Usain Bolt. In Tokyo, he came fourth in the 200m event.

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Erriyon Knighton's journey

Erriyon Knighton, an American sprinter who was born on January 29, 2004, excels in the 100 and 200m sprint. He became the youngest individual sprint medallist in Championship history when, at the age of 18, he won the bronze medal in the 200m at the 2022 World Athletics Championships.

Knighton also holds the records for the 200m for both the world under-18 best of 19.84 seconds, set on June 27, 2021, and the global under-20 record of 19.69 seconds, set on June 26, 2022. Only Usain Bolt, Yohan Blake, Noah Lyles, and Michael Johnson have run the distance faster than him, and his best time of 19.49 seconds places him fifth all-time. Additionally, it was the quickest season opener in history.

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Erriyon Knighton's career

In 2019, Erriyon Knighton, a student at Hillsborough High School in Tampa, Florida, began competing in track and field. In the final of the 2020 USA Track and Field Junior Olympics in Satellite Beach, Florida, he posted the second-fastest time ever in 200m for a competitor under the age of 18.

In his junior year of high school, at the age of 16, Knighton signed a sponsorship agreement with Adidas, forgoing his final two years of amateur competition at Hillsborough High. At the PURE Athletics Sprint Elite Meet in Clermont, Florida, on May 2, he ran the 100m in under 10 seconds at a time of 9.99. But the wind velocity was beyond the record-keeping threshold of +2.0 meters per second at +2.7.

Erriyon Knighton

He would lower that mark in the US Olympic Trials, breaking Usain Bolt's global U20 record by .05 seconds in the first round, on June 25, and again in the semi-finals the following day. In the subsequent final on June 27, he lowered his personal record to 19.84 seconds, earning a spot in the postponed 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics.

Knighton represented the United States in track and field at the Tokyo Olympics as the country's youngest male representative since Jim Ryun in 1964. He won his 200m Olympic semi-final heat on August 3, earning a berth in the following day's final automatically. With a timing of 19.93 seconds, he came fourth in the final.

At the LSU Invitational in Baton Rouge on April 30, Erriyon Knighton established an unofficial junior world record of 200m with a timing of 19.49 seconds.

At the USA Outdoor T&F Championships in June, he ran 19.69 seconds. Knighton later went on to become the youngest individual sprint medallist in Championship history when he won the bronze medal in the event at the World Athletics Championships held in Eugene, Oregon, with a timing of 19.80 seconds.

With his victory in the 200m on September 2 in Brussels, he also set a new record for the youngest winner of a Diamond League contest.

Erriyon Knighton, a track star with a sub-10 second speed in the men's 100m event, made history. He became the first American kid to run the 200m distance in under 20 seconds, a feat he has since duplicated multiple times.